


Still Life

by tessiete



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Character Study, Gen, thank you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25062685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessiete/pseuds/tessiete
Summary: It’s a very old-fashioned thing, a notebook. It’s filled with proper flimsi, and he can only buy them in the higher levels of Coruscant, in specialty stores, or in the far flung reaches of the galaxy, in small villages that still worship old gods, and pick crops by hand. Those are the journals he particularly favours. Their pages are warped, and uneven, flecked with pulp. Soft. They cling to the lead of his pencil, or the water of his colours with an adoration that mirrors his appreciation for his subjects.He draws the people that he sees. Whether that’s because he loves the present moment and would hold it forever in charcoal and ink, or because he lacks the scope to imagine anything greater, he doesn’t speculate. He only fills the pages of his notebook with beauty.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 9
Kudos: 41





	Still Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aoraki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aoraki/gifts).



He draws the people that he sees. Whether that’s because he loves the present moment and would hold it forever in charcoal and ink, or because he lacks the scope to imagine anything greater, he doesn’t speculate. He only fills the pages of his notebook with beauty.

It’s a very old-fashioned thing, a notebook. It’s filled with proper flimsi, and he can only buy them in the higher levels of Coruscant, in specialty stores, or in the far flung reaches of the galaxy, in small villages that still worship old gods, and pick crops by hand. Those are the journals he particularly favours. Their pages are warped, and uneven, flecked with pulp. Soft. They cling to the lead of his pencil, or the water of his colours with an adoration that mirrors his appreciation for his subjects.

He captures moments. The tilt of a chin. The crook of a finger. The bared throat. The carding of hair in loving hands. Fleeting loveliness that he cannot do without. These are the little truths of people that are quickly buried beneath an ironic brow, or brazen smile. These are the secrets that souls whisper when self-consciousness looks away.

Sometimes, these moments are found in the high drama of missions, at the climax of revelation when his life, or another’s, or a whole world lies in the balance. Those moments are easy to miss, and often show only hate, or fear, or ugly things. When he was younger and stood at his master’s side, he would recall these little glimpses in outlandish cartoons, and caricatures that stripped the villains of their power through ridicule. Master Dooku never laughed. 

“You’re looking at the wrong thing,” he’d said, and frowned. “Your focus should be on the solution, not the problem. And yet you fritter your time away on these tedious little scribbles which reveal nothing of worth, only your own twisted perception. I am disappointed, my Padawan.”

Duly chastened, his master’s heavy brow, and deep set eyes had filled the margins of his book. Until Knighthood. And freedom. And a renewed interest in seeing the galaxy anew, on his own, and with no leering ambition sat just on his shoulder, its eyes locked hungrily on the future, and whispering devotion to his lineage. 

He’d painted plants. Trees. Rivers. The long woad grass of Colstev. The lacey firmament of _madden_ trees on Byss. The intricate, furling roots of _baraluthi_ ferns on Haruun Kal that crept along the ground at dawn, and were only seen by the earliest, most patient, most careful observers. Between sketches, and paintings, and botanical studies were pressed flowers, and feathers, and the fine grit of foreign dust.

Then Xanatos came, and he’d found less and less time for drawing. When he had, they were often of suns, and stars stretched thin by hyperspace. Mad whirls of shapes, and hot blasts of colour that overran the thin lines of bondage that defined their figure. Until the colour bled out, and was replaced with inky blacks, thatched oblivion, and empty space.

He had many empty notebooks when Obi-Wan arrived. And it was many years before he opened them again. But there was one day, when the sun was high, and they’d stood wetted with the sweat of their own exertion, and delight on the top of a hill overlooking the city of Ba Li Tath that his fingers had itched for a pen, and he regretted the emptiness of his satchel where he used to keep his books. 

The next time they’d left the Temple, he’d brought one, just in case. And though he is older, and Obi-Wan is very young, and though their missions are often difficult or dangerous, and though his Padawan is marched forward, forward, forward by the Unifying Force, he finds there are many minutes in a day that he can devote to capturing the Living.

He draws life. He draws love. He draws things he cannot understand, or things he cannot articulate. He draws a blossom dead, the fruit ripening in its place. He draws silver light cast on green grass. He draws a _vulptex_ and the little girl who leads him through an exotic market. He draws two boys stealing kisses in the crowd at a mag-train station. He draws little hands in large palms. He draws laughing eyes. He draws a tongue caught by teeth. He takes these tiny pieces of bliss, and he carries them home, and after so long away, he is surprised to find there are things even there, at the Temple, he would wish to keep.

Colours flood the flimsi, transferring from one page to another. He is hasty to get everything down, and sometimes, he turns a page before the previous one has dried. But there is an elegance in that comingling, as well. The Room of a Thousand Fountains is a favourite haunt for the way the light plays with the water and the shadows. The salle, for the spontaneous lines of movement. The Archives, for devoted studies of furrowed brows and dexterous hands. He adds to his pages all these memories, all these infinitesimal things. These things which will, he knows, all pass in time, but which he cannot bear to lose. So he finds himself flooding his notebooks with their grace. He cannot buy flimsi quickly enough to get down every moment of delight. His hand cannot move fast enough to catch every quirked brow, or every humorous twist of the lip. There are no colours yet that he has found to match the blue of those bright and dancing eyes.

He’s drawn so many things over the course of his years. He’s drawn hate, and fear, and disappointment. He’s drawn impossible expectations, and glorious freedom. He’s drawn life, he’s drawn death. But those are from a different time, and as the ephemeral grace of youth dissolves, and the inevitable day of his bereavement approaches, he fills his pages with all the beauty of his life that he can see.

His pages are filled with Obi-Wan.


End file.
